“What Does $2000 Mean to You?”
If Congress fails to act before the end of the year,
every American family’s taxes will automatically go up
and people from all over America are writing in to say
what $2000 means to middle class families.

This is followed with a changing series of statements from people supposedly all over the country, writing in to say what raising taxes by $2000 would mean to them. Or perhaps it just written in the White House speechwriter’s office, who knows?

The president was at the Daimler Detroit Diesel Plant in Redford MI today to campaign for people to get involved in keeping taxes for the middle class right where they are, and also to get union members stirred up to battle against the right-to-work law just passed in Michigan.

He hit all his favorite campaign themes: balanced, responsible way; I saved the auto industry; it has added a quarter million new jobs; American industry is back; the usual plant in the audience called out “I love you”, and Obama loved him back.

Took an article in The American, AEI’s magazine, to point out that Obama is doing a one-eighty here, the much scorned real life flip-flop. The Bush Tax Cuts, excoriated by every Democrat ever since 2003, derided as “tax cuts for the rich,” now suddenly must not be allowed to expire. If the “tax cuts for the rich” were so terrible, then how could the expiration of the “tax cuts for the rich” hurt anyone but the rich? If those tax cuts were just for the rich, their expiration couldn’t hurt the middle class.

Suddenly almost everyone agrees that the Bush tax cuts were beneficial to everyone at all income levels — not just the small number of taxpayers at the very top. Just what Republicans have been explaining all along. But a remarkable number of campaign statements have expiration dates.

Obama emphasizes “a balanced approach” and talks about everyone paying “their fair share.” Most everyone agrees that is a good thing, but when you start talking specifics, they’re not so sure they do agree. The top tax rate was cut by 13% under President Bush, and revenue increased by $84 billion. The lowest rate was cut by 33%, and the bottom half of income earners pay only 2.4% of all taxes. If Obama gets his way, top earners will pay 70.6% of all taxes. This is balanced?

What is unbalanced in our country’s fiscal life is the spending. Democrats simply cannot find anything to cut. It’s all way too important, even the many duplicate job-training courses offered by many different departments, all equally ineffective.

A new poll from Politico/GWU/Battleground finds that 76% of Americans favor “Cutting government spending across the board.” Well, well.